Not modern enough?

Fifty years ago, Eleanor Lieberman helped in the groundbreaking for her dream house, an innovative structure in south suburban Olympia Fields whose flat roof, concrete floors and reliance on passive solar heat via expansive south-facing windows marked the home as a groundbreaker itself.

The cedar, brick and glass house that architect Edward Humrich designed for Lieberman and her husband, Saul, is open and airy, with indoor and outdoor spaces flowing into one another easily, and broad, flat eaves blocking the hot rays of the high summer sun. "There were all these people putting up colonial houses on lots like ours, which made no sense on the prairie," Lieberman recalls. "I danced to a different drummer; I wanted something that respected the land, with a low profile that seemed indigenous to the flatness of the prairie."

Five decades later, Lieberman is looking to sell the house where she and Saul (now deceased) raised their three children, and she finds that her house, built to hug the land it's on, may not be as interesting to buyers as that very land is.

In her subdivision, a desirable part of Olympia Fields developed by her father, at least two other houses in the same style, known as mid-century modern, have been torn down to make way for much bigger new homes.

Lieberman's may or may not survive. She and her real estate agent acknowledge it could go as a teardown, though both hope that's not what it comes to.

"It's lamentable, but we have these acre-plus lots in a gorgeous setting, and people who want a huge McMansion love the lot but don't care about the house," says Joe Kunkel. A longtime collector and dealer of mid-century modern furnishings, Kunkel this year became a real estate agent specializing in mid-century modern homes. He's also a homeowner in Graymoor, the subdivision where Lieberman's house is; and is Lieberman's agent, listing her house for $565,000.

The wave of teardowns that has washed over so many parts of the Chicago area hasn't discriminated by architectural styles, but devotees of mid-century modern homes say the threat may be bigger for this style of house. Among the reasons: The houses characteristically are modest, meaning they're too small for today's tastes; they're often hard to add onto without obliterating the original look; and, frankly, the original look isn't all that pretty to everybody's eyes.

Nevertheless, the style, which flourished most in California but made a notable mark in the Chicago area -- especially on the North Shore, in and around Glen Ellyn, and in the Homewood/Flossmoor/Olympia Fields area -- is on the verge of hipness again.

And it's not only teardowns that threaten mid-century modern houses. Because not everybody "gets" the style, a mid-century modern house can be a hard sell. "Homes in that style in the Midwest are a little bit more challenging to market," says Linda Pilmer, owner of Pilmer Real Estate in Aurora. She is the listing agent for a primo example of mid-century modern from 1958 in a neighborhood of many beautiful homes in more conventional styles near Aurora University.

Since March, she has twice marked down the price on the house she represents, a low-slung, three-bedroom brick structure that was the home of an architect. And, she says she has told the seller to count on a longer-than-average wait for a sale. "It will take longer because there is a limited number of buyers who want this architectural style," she says.

That may not be so true on the West Coast, where the mid-century modern style was a popular reflection of the indoor-outdoor lifestyle, and if Kunkel and his fellow fans of the style here have anything to do with it, it won't be true here forever.

Kunkel is co-founder of a group called Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond, which sponsors tours and other events to raise awareness of the style's many great examples here. Kunkel also has a Web site, jetsetmodern.com, where he runs articles on the style, sells some of his collected pieces, and lists houses in the style that are for sale.

While mid-century modern furniture, clothes and dishes, with their swoopy shapes and Jetsons colors, have been hip for years now, the architecture, by far the biggest and most expensive relics of the era, hasn't fared as well.